Hands Off
by Lenny the Wicked
Summary: Courier Six can't speak, Dean Domino won't shut up. A series of snapshots on their relationship.
1. Pretty as a Picture

A fresh burn across her cheek, Miriam shot out the last working speaker before she turned off the alarm system entirely. Finally, the collar around her neck stopped beeping and she had a moment to sit down and rub the back of her head, still throbbing from the noise. Dean wouldn't be going anywhere without her noticing – he wasn't one for jumping even short distances.

"Christ!"

Dean didn't even crack open the door, and so after a while Miriam realized she would have to do it herself. She stood up, still rubbing her head, and poked her head through the opening. Her Pip Boy started grumbling through sentences without her meaning to trigger it, but eventually she flipped on the volume just enough for a curious " _Dean?_ " to come through.

"All right, you're resourceful. I'll give you that," the ghoul said from atop the stairs. "It's going to take a lot more than juggling keys and shooting speakers to stop me. As I see it? All I need to do is kill you, then make a run for the exit. You do the same, you'll be clawing at the lock until your head blows off. So maybe you and I should have a little chat – just like we did when you first waltzed into town."

Her Pip Boy had already begun to whirr with her thoughts – she couldn't reconcile between her immediate _what the fuck Dean let's go_ and her more lucid _that means you have the key_ and she had to fiddle with her Pip Boy to get the sound she wanted. " _Come on, Dean, let's get out of here already._ "

"No, not with you," he said disdainfully.

Miriam groaned, flapping her arms in frustration. " _Fuck you Dean they shot me in the fucking face. I wanna go home._ "

"Don't act stupid, I know you're not an idiot," he snapped, thumbing at his pistol. When she didn't mirror him he paused, but he didn't stop shouting at her. "I've spent two hundred years planning this heist and I'm not about to let some mute pup muss it up."

" _Then you do it – you're not choking on your own blood every time you pass a window_ ," her Pip Boy blared. Her heart raced. Dean wouldn't really try to kill her, would he? She had been skating by without fighting and she wasn't sure how well she would fare in a fight. Dean had spent the past few years fending off ghost people with explosives and skirting them to get to his stashes whereas Miriam had only spent the past few months rerouting gas and triggering small explosions and fires to keep the ghosts at bay.

"First thing's first. Hand over your weapons or I'll shoot you."

" _Stop being stupid_ ," her Pip Boy whirred as she set her pistol on the stair in front of her and stepped back. Dean stooped to pick it up and she stepped further towards the exit before she saw the key dangling from Dean's belt loop. " _Greedy fucker asshole._ "

He sneered. "You're the one who came along thinking you could just rewrite the script to suit you. Well this isn't your performance, honey, it's mine. I've spent over two hundred years planning this heist, and I won't be upstaged by an understudy."

"Upthaged by an unde'thudy," she voiced, testing the phrase, clicking her fingers as she echoed him. "Up-thaged by an unde'thudy up-thaged by an unde'thudy."

Her Pip Boy joined in, " _Upstaged by an understudy upstaged by an under—"_

"Will you stop that?"

Her Pip Boy continued a few more times before eventually switching to a quiet, " _what's an understudy_ " and beeping as she flicked off the hands free communicator.

"Backup."

She took a step back, realized he was trying to answer her question, and typed, " _Why's it called an understudy?"_

"An actor, who backs up another actor if the first can't make it," Dean answered irately. "It doesn't matter. I'm the main event, you're not."

She started to type again, pausing halfway through to reconsider. Then she typed, " _You really want to kill me?_ "

"Only if you get in my way again. And I don't trust you not to become a liability."

Miriam couldn't think of a response, so instead she flipped to her audio notes and played the tape she had found in Dean's dressing room. Pretty as a picture. She could snap her fingers to it – she could snap her fingers to almost anything Dean said. Pretty as a picture, upstaged by an understudy, clever words and phrases which she could rock to while speaking. They were easier to say than the kinds of things she usually entered into her Pip Boy.

"So you went into my safe, huh?"

She typed, " _I didn't know it was yours until I found this._ "

He clucked his tongue and reached around her, not quite touching her. "Come on then, let's have a seat."

She walked a few paces to Vera's dressing room and settled down onto the couch, shifting away when Dean sat beside her. Now he wasn't even pretending not to threaten her – he pointed her own pistol at her. She flipped her hands-free communicator back on so he wouldn't be threatened by any attempts to speak.

" _That's mine_ ," it blared. She scrunched her nose – the jury-rigged communicator she'd made in the Sierra Madre wasn't nearly as good as the one Raul had helped her build. She couldn't get any filters on this one, and wouldn't be able to until she got back to the Lucky 38. " _Obvious. Old communicator's better – better sensory, neuro-communicative device, confirmation required, no cloud gunk._ "

A good smack would set the thing off, she thought, but she was trying very hard, " _Stupid thing, gonna get shot."_

"Why don't you calm down while I explain exactly how this curtain is going to fall," Dean said smoothly, flashing a rotten grin. "You're going to establish a comlink for me, let Elijah think he's speaking to you while I'm down in the vault."

Her Pip Boy began to whirr directions and she quickly cut the volume.

"Just so," he said, reaching and turning up the volume for her.


	2. Necktie, Wristband

Blood rolled down Miriam's lips when she first sat beside Dean, reaching as if to pull a scarf over her face when there was nothing there to pull. She leaned back into the chair, gripping the arm as he explained that it was a bomb, not to make any sudden moves. She didn't look at him, and she didn't speak back, so he ground out,

"Do you understand? Get up from that chair, or make any sudden moves, and I'll blast your ass so far through your head it'll turn the moon cherry pie red."

She cracked a smile and started to laugh, rocking her head quickly before stopping abruptly and trying to speak. Trying and failing – whatever came out of her mouth was nearly incomprehensible. "Bwath yaw ath tho faw whew yaw head _."_

Then she coughed, blood splattered onto her leg, and she stopped smiling. She slowly reached over to her arm and Dean fingered the detonator, only to realize she was adjusting the device on her arm. She tapped on it for a short while before it blared, " _Is that a shaped charge? Otherwise you're going to blast both of our asses through our heads._ "

He raised a brow – Pip Boys didn't come installed with those sorts of devices. She must have made modifications, which meant she wasn't as dumb as she first sounded. He got a better look at her – she couldn't have been a day over twenty, and that was being very generous. Her nose hooked unflatteringly from her sparse, blackened brow, and bags grew under her eyes. She looked ill, ghoulish.

"Just because I work in entertainment doesn't mean I'm a moron," Dean said, clapping his hands over his knees. "I heard my necktie beeping, I know what that means. I'm part of this somehow. I want out of this contract."


	3. Pick-Me-Up

Miriam was surprisingly calm for someone so young. Ghost people didn't seem to frighten her, and for the most part she just slipped far enough past to lay traps of her own, mines which would slowly release gas and ignite when she fired a laser at them. The hardest part was helping her find places where she could rest. She didn't handle the Cloud well – her breath turned airy and whistley and she would collapse and have to be dragged to safety, and even in areas with low concentrations she struggled.

It must have been at least two days before he finally saw her break down sobbing, in the ruins of an old café. She smacked her forehead with her palm and Dean reached out for her. She jerked away. "No tou't."

He was getting better at understanding her attempts at speech. "Alright, no touching. No hitting."

She rolled her eyes at him, and started typing, " _I had a hands-free speech aid and it got lost. Can't find parts for a new one. Fuck this place._ "

"What parts would you need? I've been here a while, you know, I might know where to look."

" _Sensor modules, neural interface, RobCo compatible, scrap electronics and metal. Screwdriver and wrench. Welding tools._ "

"Sounds complicated."

She slapped the table and typed, " _It's not complicated it's expensive. I want to find whoever moved it and knock their teeth out. And if you don't know where to find them then just fuck off._ "

"So hostile."

She bared her teeth but mumbled some sort of apology. And then she paused, typed something, fumbled with her volume, and let it play, " _No I'm not sorry._ "

Dean started to light a cigarette when she coughed loudly, staining the table with blood. He snapped his lighter shut and rolled his eyes. "So neither of us can enjoy ourselves, huh?"

" _If you consider hands free speech aids a pick me up, no_."

Dean laughed. "You know there used to be a scientist, pre-war, I forget his name, but he was almost completely immobile and had a communication device built into his wheelchair."

" _Wheelchair?_ "

"A mobility aid," he said. She figured it would be a chair with wheels, but that raised all sorts of questions about how he got it up stairs and into small elevators which seemed so common. "Supposed to be the greatest mind of the twenty-first century, had some theories of astrophysics dumbed down for a common audience before they were disproved a few years later. Had a bunch of morons convinced they understood the inner workings of the universe."

" _And his chair's around here?_ "

"Oh, no, just a thought."

Miriam squealed loudly, typed, " _Nuka Cola?"_ caught Dean shaking his head, typed, " _I hate this town._ "


	4. Hands Free

When Miriam found Christine, she seemed so excited at first, to have found someone else like her. The poor girl didn't have any idea that Christine's voice was only recovering, needed time to heal, rest, medication, and neither did Christine. They communicated briefly by taking turns on Miriam's Pip Boy but it was long and time-consuming and Christine didn't have the patience to focus on it.

" _I can make it hands free now. Workbench. Need extra hands._ "

Christine had replied with a shrug and a nod and they returned to the clinic where Miriam would find a workbench to pound on. When they returned she wore a clunky piece of headgear which she had tied under her braid to secure it. She looked unhappy with it, but when Dean asked, "So, finally find your neural interface?"

" _Yes missing padding rubs kind of hurts no filter._ " She grumbled and fiddled with it, trying to reset it so it would slow down, punctuate her sentences. " _Only reads English have to think in—_ "

She cut the volume immediately and took a seat on the fountain, rubbing her forehead. It was just then he noticed the cord poking under her collar and bulging from under her sleeve, which she moved just slightly aside before typing, " _Old corroded hardware._ "

"And your other one was better?"

" _My other one was practically brand new._ "

"Really?"

" _Mr. House, Robco tech. Lots of Robco tech."_

Blood started rolling out of her nostril and down her lips. She touched it faintly and reached for a cloth she no longer possessed before standing up and tilting her head back.

" _Gonna go inside, having trouble breathing."_


	5. Ideas

" _Why would I let you get hurt we're stuck here,_ " Miriam's Pip Boy whirred. " _There are holograms around turn them on should be safe._ "

"Can you keep them from firing on me?"

" _Give you the passcard, sneak out without you. Ring bell. Radio._ " After a moment, Dean agreed, that was a pretty good idea, and her Pip Boy whirred, " _Of course it is I'll go rig it up._ "


	6. Short (Circuit)

Dean wasn't the one to stumble out of the vault. It was Miriam, bloody and tired and ready to go home. Christine helped her out and Dean took her pack – selfish bastard. He threw her the water bottle, and a stimpack, and a med-x for good measure, and counted the gold.

"There has to be more than this—"

She slowly raised the volume on her Pip Boy and it whirred, " _Fuck you it's enough. That's almost 60 thousand caps. More than you could ever spend. Greedy fucker bastard._ "

"And I suppose you want in?"

" _Don't care wanna go home."_

Dean took off his sunglasses – maybe he wasn't aware just how hard it was to lie with this thing tapping into the language center of her brain. She started sipping the water while her Pip Boy continued whirring profanities and curses and gibberish because her mind was racing.

"Are you alright?" Christine asked.

" _No no no haven't been alright this whole time and I wanna go home._ "

Dean frowned, setting the bag down. "Well that's good. We can set off right now. New Vegas, huh?"

" _Why are you gonna shoot me again?"_

"Oh come now, you know that was just business. And I didn't rig those holograms up."

" _Forgot you're not that smart._ "

Christine urged her to sip more slowly and Miriam grudgingly obliged, finally starting to wipe the blood from her mouth. She leaned back against the bed and covered her face while her Pip Boy whirred directions and equations and more nonsense he could barely understand before finally culminating in, " _I trusted you and you were going to kill me._ "

She noticed that her nose was bleeding and her eyes were watering, but it was just snot and tears. Acting her age for once.


	7. Out of Character

When they reached the Lucky 38, Dean tried to follow her in and she nearly punched him. She'd gotten her old speech aid out of a footlocker by the radio and kept the old one for old time's sake, and the new one was clearer, more filtered. It still read off thoughts she might have otherwise kept to herself, but it was clear what she wanted to say and what she was thinking outloud.

" _No. you don't get to come in._ "

"And why's that? Afraid I'll run another heist?"

" _Because if you come in I'll have my securitrons blast you, and I don't care what else they hit. Stay at the Tops, or Gommorah. You'd like the Tops, there's a theater there."_

He raised a hairless brow. "Come on, what's it going to take?"

" _A time machine, your gun in its holster, my skin on my face._ "

"Look, why don't you come find me once you've cooled down? This is all just business and once I make bank I won't be any trouble for you at all. I'll even treat you to dinner."

" _Better not be the Ultra Luxe then,_ " her Pip Boy whirred. " _I should make it abundantly clear that if you fuck with me, Mr. House will make sure you never leave the Strip alive. And more than that, people like me here. You won't be able to take ten steps through Freeside before the Kings break your legs. So you're right, Dean. You won't be any trouble. Because the second I think you are, the second I think you might be, for me or any of my friends, the most trouble is going to be moving your lifeless corpse without making a mess."_

Dean backed away from her, clutching his bag. "Threats? How out of character."

" _I wonder who I learned that from?"_

The doors locked behind her, and she left Dean alone on the steps.


	8. Debt Collection

Eventually Miriam found herself in the Tops and found Dean relaxing in the courtyard with a martini. A cyberdog followed closely behind, and a tall blond doctor waited just a few steps behind. She took a seat beside the ghoul while her Pip Boy whistled, " _I'm calling in a favor._ "

"And what would that be?"

" _Take a wild guess. The Legion's going to try and take Hoover Dam, and I need as many allies as I can get. You're going to donate funds to fortify Freeside."_

Dean laughed in her face and she glanced to Arcade.

"I'm guessing this is the Ghoul who shot you back in the Sierra Madre?"

" _Holograms did it, but he threatened me._ "

She still had the scar on her left cheek, a nearly even swath of ghoulish red skin.

"Now why would I donate funds to Freeside when I'm safe here on the Strip?"

Miriam grabbed him by the shirt collar and hoisted him out of the chair, spilling his Martini onto the ground. She was much stronger than she looked, even more so now that she was out of the cloud and breathing easy. She didn't hold him, just shoved him aside and approached him slowly, scanning him as if checking for weapons.

" _You're going to do the right thing because you owe me. You've used so many people over the years and you're going to take a step in the direction of making amends. You owe that entire fortune to me. I'm only asking for you to help the Followers build barricades and stockpile medical supplies. That doesn't even put a dent in your wallet."_

"I don't owe you anything."

" _You would have died in that vault and you know it. You owe me your life._ "

"I think I preferred you when you had to stop to type every lucid thought," Dean said disdainfully, slipping his hands into his pockets and pulling out a lighter and cigarette. Still smoking after all those years.

"Six, we'll ask someone else. It's fine."

" _It's not fine._ " She couldn't get her way with reason and she never tried to get her way with force, but Miriam wasn't going to let Dean win while they were in her turf. " _You're in my villa now, Dean. You want to keep your hoard? Fine. Then leave. You don't get to sit on your hands while my friends take bullets for undeserving bastards like you._ "

Dean took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigarette, peering down his ragged nose at her. He blew smoke from his nostrils and finally croaked, "Why does this matter so much to you?"

" _Sierra Madre._ "

"What about it?"

" _Two hundred years to show up a man who's been dead this whole time._ " She scowled. " _And you're asking why this matters so much to me? It's the right thing to do, Dean. You might want to try it sometime._ "

She had already started to leave by the time her Pip Boy started whirring with curses and profanities but she turned off the volume and grabbed the doctor's sleeve, letting him lead her away. He must have been traveling with her a long time, because he knew when not to try and speak to her. So did Dean.

"Wait," he called with a sigh. "I suppose I can spare something."

She didn't smile, didn't look back, but her Pip Boy whirred a quiet, " _Affirmative_ ," and she kept walking.


End file.
